Palm Beach couples join forces to renovate landmark home on Golfview

Friday

At 9 Golfview Road, a close collaboration between two Palm Beach couples has resulted in an update to a landmarked house that just entered the market, furnished, at $9.45 million.

The sellers include husband-and-wife architects Richard Sammons, chairman of the Architectural Commission, and Anne Fairfax, a member of the Landmarks Preservation Commission. Their business partners are interior designer and Architectural Commissioner Betsy Shiverick and her husband, Paul. The four own the house through a limited liability company, the Acroterium Group.

The project took them less than two years to complete, and they recently listed the four-bedroom, four-and-a-half-bath house through broker Christian Angle of Christian Angle Real Estate. The house has 7,050 square feet of living space, inside and out.

>> PHOTOS: Renovated landmark home on Golfview Road, Palm Beach

The home at 9 Golfview Road is being sold furnished. A long refectory table in the living room was found in England, and the Venetian doors were found at auction. Photo by Daniel Newcomb, courtesy of Christian Angle Real Estate

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Members of the team already had a history of working together. The Shivericks received the Preservation Foundation of Palm Beach’s Elizabeth L. and John H. Schuler Award in 2016 for their Island Drive house, which was designed by Sammons. He and his wife run Fairfax & Sammons, a Manhattan and Palm Beach firm that specializes in classical and traditional architecture. For this project, Sammons designed the architecture and his wife handled the landscape design.

Betsy Shiverick, meanwhile, runs Shiverick Interiors of Palm Beach. Her husband, who also has a good eye for architecture, was well-equipped to keep an eye on the financial end for this project. He’s spent the last 35 years managing money on Wall Street.

One of the surprises of the house: You can’t see the grand living room when you walk in the front door. Photo by Daniel Newcomb, courtesy of Christian Angle Real Estate

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On Golfview Road, Sammons led the way, so to speak. He saw the house — on the private street just south of Worth Avenue — as ripe for transformation.

"When driving on Golfview," he recalls, "I had always thought that this house would be easy to fix. I just saw how to make it prettier," Sammons says about the house, which faces the Everglades Golf Course across the street.

He approached the Shivericks and asked if they’d be interested in being involved — and the couple agreed that it would be a good fit for them.

"I thought it would be a good architecture and interior-design project," Betsy says.

The house was designed in 1926 by Clark Lawrence but had undergone a variety of changes over the ensuring years. It originally had Spanish-style architecture. But in 1949, it had been renovated. That project changed the look of the facade, Sammons explains, and not for the better. As is his habit, the architect doesn’t mince words.

"They redid it to look like bad New Orleans, with a 15-by-8-foot picture window," he says.

The back bedroom, or second master, opens onto a terrace that has an awning. Photo by Daniel Newcomb, courtesy of Christian Angle Real Estate

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After undergoing what Sammons describes as a "creative reconstruction," the house is again a Spanish-style home. The project earned the blessing of the Landmarks Preservation Commission in 2016. Commissioners noted that the house presented an unusual situation because its architecture had been changed substantially from its original appearance.

Today, Betsy points out, the house and grounds are full of pleasant surprises.

Here’s the first: The house can’t be seen from the street, and upon entering, one must turn a corner to get the first view of it. What one sees is the re-landscaped front yard, a new pool and the reimagined limed-pink-with-cypress façade.

On the west side, opposite the second-floor balcony, Sammons designed a parapet embellished with finials that he’d found at a Habitat for Humanities store.

"I had to buy a house to have a place to put the finials," he says with a smile.

Listing other changes, he notes that the front door has a new hand-carved shell-stone surround. The old picture window is gone, replaced by two arched steel-framed windows, and a balcony that offers "fantastic views of the golf course," Sammons adds.

Contractor Mike Conville’s Beacon Construction Group in West Palm Beach oversaw the renovation.

Inside, a visitor’s progression from the vestibule and entry hall, which has a tiled-bar alcove, offers another surprise.

"It looks like a small house from the outside, and when you walk in the front door, you still don’t see the grand living room," Betsy says. "It has a spectacular soaring ceiling, a catwalk and a large fireplace. From the street, you just can’t believe that a room of this size and importance is in this house."

In addition to changing out the metal railing on the catwalk to Spanish-style slats, Sammons designed a Mozarabic surround for the arched windows. He also uncovered the original fireplace — another surprise — and had it restored. And he hid the elevator doors with a set of Venetian doors dating to the late 17th-century.

Windows and doors throughout are all new with steel frames. All of the lighting has been replaced, and the original floors have been refinished. Cypress louvered doors also were stripped and refinished.

North of the living room is the dining room, which was previously the loggia. The room is now closed in with steel-framed patio doors. It features the original tile floor and beamed ceiling, and the shell-stone wall surface was added during the renovation.

Off the loggia to the east is a bedroom suite that under the present configuration serves as a library, and at the north end of the house is the family room, breakfast room, kitchen and garage.

The kitchen, which had been renovated by previous owners, has a tile floor, white cabinetry, marble countertops and stainless appliances and backsplash. The breakfast room now has doors opening to the garden.

The family room was a gymnasium before the renovation, says Betsy. "We took out the equipment and the mirrors. It’s cozy, nicely located near the kitchen and has a nice view of the inner courtyard."

Upstairs, the master bedroom opens to the front terrace and overlooks the golf course. Its features include a tray ceiling, refinished louvers, and new trim around windows and doors.

The master bathroom is finished in marble and Walker Zanger tile.

"I designed the vanities with Arabic arches, so that the Spanish theme runs throughout," Sammons says. "And it has a giant walk-in shower with mosaic walls."

Also on the second floor, another bedroom opens to a terrace that overlooks the garden. Its bathroom has been renovated with marble and wood appointments. Other bathrooms also have been redone.

Improvements throughout the house include new electrical, plumbing and air-conditioning systems. A flood-prevention system also was put into place.

The guest cottage above the garage comprises a living room, a full kitchen, a bedroom and a second bedroom that Betsy envisioned as a nursery.

In addition to the golf-course views, the house overlooks a variety of landscaped spaces.

"The surprise continues as you go through to the back, where there’s an inner courtyard, which is so peaceful and quiet. There’s also a secret garden diagonally off of it," Betsy explains.

For the interiors, she had the walls painted in a neutral rendition of Venetian plaster, and she chose to "curate" a collection of furniture and accessories rather than simply furnish the house with new pieces. They came from a variety of sources including shops on Antique Row in West Palm Beach.

"I looked for 17th- and 18th-century Spanish pieces. I found a lot of them at auctions, sourced a couple from overseas and found a fair amount on Antique Row," she says.

This project will not be the team’s last, Betsy says. The couples will be on the lookout for other older homes, landmarked or not, in need of a carefully planned restoration or renovation.